Another Side Effect of Chemotherapy: Smell Sensitivity

This Saturday I had an amazing day with one of my close friends. She planned a fun girl’s day for us starting with a pedicure for me. She wanted me to unwind – I’ve been a little overwhelmed lately. It was a wonderful day and I am so grateful to have a friend like her. In fact I have the most wonderful friends in the world, they all care deeply and make me feel loved.

My darling friend had a sample of a fragrance she loved and wanted to purchase a bottle of the spray cologne. The problem was she didn’t know the name so the sales associates had to spend some time to track it down, which involved smelling a lot of perfume samples in the store. I used to always wear perfume. It was one of my favorite gifts, and my mother always gave me my favorite fragrance for Christmas. I loved scented candles and room spritzers. Until I got breast cancer.

When I was going through chemotherapy. I was very sensitive to smells. They irritated me and my favorite hand soap especially nauseated me the evenings I came home from infusion. I changed the hand soap and haven’t been able to tolerate the smell since. That goes for a lot of perfume too. Citrus scents don’t bother me, but flowery ones and sweet fragrances do. It is a real conundrum. I miss the luxury of bathing in scented bath water and dousing myself with smelly creams and perfumes. Nowadays though I am very picky about the smells in my house. This is an unfortunate left over side effect from chemotherapy. Most times I don’t use any scent at all. My husband loves Irish Spring soap, which I am trying to tolerate in our master bath.

My friend finally found her perfume – a soft powdery scent. She also loves the vanilla sugar products from Body Works. I’ll just settle for being clean although the huge stack of Irish Spring Soap my husband has in the bathroom is killing me.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathy-Ellen Kups, RN

Kathy-Ellen is a Registered Nurse living in Michigan. In 2003, Kathy-Ellen was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. She was cancer-free from April 2004 until December of 2013 when it was discovered that...read more